Database systems are used to collect and store various types of information that are later extracted for viewing or manipulation. Various different types of database systems exist, including relational database systems, object relational database systems, and others.
A user usually gains access to a database system through a client system that is coupled to the database system over a network. In response to commands entered or selected by a user, the client system issues requests to the database system for desired data. Upon receiving data from the database system, the client system presents the received data to the user in some predetermined format.
Relational database systems store data in relational tables. When a query, such as a Structured Query Language (SQL) query is received, a subset of the data is extracted from the relational tables. Typical data types defined in relational databases include relatively simple data types, such as integers, real numbers, and character strings. Database systems have also been developed to store and manipulate more sophisticated data types, such as audio data, video data, multimedia data, image data, formatted documents, maps, and so forth. One example of a database system that is capable of supporting such data types is an object relational database system.
One data type in object relational databases is the geospatial data type, which includes data used for geographic or spatial representations, such as for maps or other images in which some spatial relationship can be defined between various objects in the image. However, convenient display mechanisms have not been provided to visually depict these types of data.